The core of the festival was the exhibition of bureaus belonging to the Association of Architectural Workshops (OAM), and in addition to the projects of the last two years, for the first time in the history of the St. Petersburg Architecture Biennale, visitors were also invited to evaluate the buildings implemented over the previous fifteen years of the association's existence.
At the opening, the president of the St. Petersburg Union of Architects, Oleg Romanov, said that the main goal of the biennale is not only the presentation of the achievements of St. Petersburg architects, but also a dialogue with the townspeople. “An exchange of views is necessary, because not everyone perceives modern architecture. Such biennials are intended so that we can tell what modern architecture is and what trends are in the city,”Romanov said.
Most of the works presented are already well known to the townspeople. For example, we are talking about the reconstructed General Headquarters of Nikita and Oleg Yaveinov, the new stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater of Yuri Zemtsov and Mikhail Kondiain, the project of the depositary of the Ethnographic Museum of Mikhail Mamoshin, the concept of development of the alluvial territory of Vasilyevsky Island from the Soyuz 55 bureau. However, one could also look at the projects, the implementation of which took place more calmly, without such close public attention. The exhibition also features projects of major competitions, for example, such as the Judicial District, the Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki.
Mikhail Mamoshin: “It seems to me that construction in St. Petersburg, especially in the historical part of the city, has always had its own distinctive feature. We see completely different works, but they have something in common - in the subtext of each of them we read Petersburg. The architecture as a whole has become smarter, more meaningful and of higher quality, more integrated into the dialogue with the city. There are few spots left in the center, so a lot of attention is paid to reconstruction - the architecture is becoming more introverted. "
And if the organizers gave the workshops some freedom in choosing what will be presented for this dialogue at the Biennale, then the selection for the "Architectural Yearbook 2015" presented at the opening of the event was much more careful. It includes the best, in the opinion of the association, works of its members over the past year - only 91 projects.
An important difference between the anniversary biennale is that this time they decided to immerse the guests in an excursion to what the association managed to accomplish over the fifteen years of its existence - a short photo report on the work done is presented on the second floor. This provides an excellent opportunity to trace how the attitude towards the architecture of the city has changed from 2000 to the present day.
Evgeny Podgornov: “Many of the buildings that are presented here from a retrospective, earlier they caused criticism, but we see that these projects have taken root in the city. Meanwhile, today, creating a bold project that everyone will talk about is not the main task of an architect. A bold project should be in place, especially in the center. The tactfulness of the building must be present”.
Looking at the retrospective, you can see how functional preferences change in accordance with the time: in well-fed years there are more business and entertainment projects, offices and shopping centers - the time of financial difficulties shifts the priority to housing. However, so far we still see many public projects with government funding.
Many architectural studios began to work more actively for export, either transferring the Petersburg spirit to other regions of the country, or on the contrary, allowing themselves to go beyond the local atmosphere. In particular, "Studio 44" presented its monumental projects of the Theater of Choreography and the building of the Ministry of Defense in Astana, a concept for the development of the historical center of Kaliningrad, and boasted of a railway station in Olympic Sochi, made in time pressure. Felix Bunov's B-2 workshop prepared a project for an entire resort town in the mountains of Italy, Mamoshin's bureau, in addition to presenting a new stage at the Maly Drama Theater in St. Petersburg, came up with a project for a cone-museum in Salekhard.
At the same time, not many ideas are borrowed from world architectural practice - architects seem to look more at their own, Leningrad school of architecture and urban planning. Allusions to the Stalinist Empire style or functionalism coexist with the desire to rethink world trends taking into account the Russian mentality and even the denial of the international style.
Sergey Oreshkin: “The quality of work has improved dramatically, and a philosophical background has emerged. Before the crisis, people earned money, almost did not think about the history and context of the place and designed square meters, but now the masters feel sorry for the strength, they are trying to go deeper. A lot of eclecticism and pseudo-historicalism have appeared. There is a demand for this, and there is also a desire to follow the path that seems to be the most successful for both the investor and the architect. Neoclassicism, neo-Stalinist Empire style emerged. The interstyle used by our Western colleagues is unacceptable in our country at the intuitive level. "
Perhaps due to the fact that a lot of works devoted to the development of the city center were presented at the biennial, attention was focused on the topic of attitudes towards traditions, to how important it is for the public and the law today to preserve the historically established urban space. However, this was the result of how boldly the historical part of the city was treated since the beginning of the 2000s. Today, a frightened man in the street shudders at the phrase "modern architecture" and conjectures urban planning mistakes.
According to the architects, now "any historic building has been declared a sacred cow." On the other hand, it allows you to move to a qualitatively new level of projects. Yuri Zemtsov believes that now there are fewer "extravagant projects", the city disciplines the authors: "Architects, being in the St. Petersburg environment with its regulation and severity, are forced to maintain this level."
Nikita Yavein: “It seems to me that the average temperature in the hospital has remained the same, but there is a polarization between what is done badly and what is done well. Today there are many more frankly bad things, but at the same time there are more good things. Mass architecture is terrible. Architecture develops due to two things: a smart customer and a construction budget. At the center, the customer is forced to be smart, because otherwise it is difficult to implement the project. In mass construction, you can also find a lot of interesting things, but few people bother to look for it, 80% of projects are done by the builders themselves, houses are simply recruited from standard sections. "
However, the authors of the projects themselves will tell about how the attitude of architects and the public has changed within the framework of lectures and round tables at the Biennale, which this year was organized by the Project Baltia magazine.
The exhibition runs until April 20.
